The ride-sharing app, called BlaBlaCar, has swept into the record books for a start-up company in France.
It is now valued at €1.4 billion, making it Europe’s latest billion-euro company, called “unicorn”.
The app brings together drivers and passengers to share car journeys and save costs. The company believes an average journey booked with it is 79% less expensive than an off-peak single train ticket in the UK.
It boasts that it “can become a relevant alternative to trains – we have more departure times, we're faster, we're cheaper and we have more routes," its UK boss said.
The average journey costs £17 and is 213 miles long.
BlaBlaCar, based in Paris, has around 20 million members in 19 countries, mainly in Europe, with about 30% of these being drivers.
London underground strikes caused the app service to leap by 300% for people going to the Reading Festival. This gave more people the experience of using the app, similar to the postal strike in the ’80s which promoted the use of fax machines.
It was a $200 million investment in a funding round which pushed the start-up into the coveted unicorn status.
Fortune magazine noted that there are just 138 start-up unicorns in the world, but the number has soared from 80 in January.
The founders say much of the new investment funds will be used to expand into new territories. Brazil is scheduled for a launch this month and plans are afoot for operations in Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
The name derives from how chatty passengers want to be during the journey. A single “Bla” marked on the request indicates a quiet ride through to the triple “BlaBlaBla” for non-stop chatter.
Drivers make no profit on the ride except for contributions towards petrol costs and general wear and tear. These are paid electronically by passengers and the company takes about 12% of the total cost of the ride.
BlaBlaCars started operating in Portugal in 2012. The app can be downloaded onto a smartphone or accessed on the web.
